Former Rolls-Royce engineer joins Vertical Aerospace

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has appoint­ed Tim Williams as its Chief Engi­neer, where he will lead the devel­op­ment of the com­pa­ny’s upcom­ing eVTOL pas­sen­ger air­craft.

Williams has more than three decades’ expe­ri­ence in the aero­space indus­try, and joins the com­pa­ny from Rolls-Royce — where he held numer­ous lead­er­ship posi­tions includ­ing Chief Design Engi­neer and Chief Project Engi­neer.

He spent the past 10 years as a Chief Engi­neer, work­ing on a range of com­bat, trans­port and heli­copter engines. Most recent­ly, he led the engi­neer­ing team to sup­port a large ser­vice fleet of mil­i­tary engines across the world.

Williams said: “As we enter the next stage of avi­a­tion, devel­op­ing on demand, car­bon free air trans­port to tack­le the worlds urban mobil­i­ty chal­lenge, I am thrilled to join Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, a com­pa­ny at the fore­front in devel­op­ing the tech­nol­o­gy that will be need­ed.

“I have been par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed with what the com­pa­ny has achieved in its short his­to­ry, har­ness­ing the pace and agili­ty from For­mu­la 1, the progress that the com­pa­ny has made has been remark­able. I am real­ly excit­ed about join­ing the fan­tas­tic team and lead­ing the devel­op­ment and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the new air­craft.”

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space is cur­rent­ly work­ing with avi­a­tion author­i­ties in order to become one of the first com­pa­nies to cer­ti­fy a com­mer­cial­ly viable eVTOL air­craft, with a tar­get year of 2024.

The Bris­tol-based firm has already flown two full-scale pro­to­types and when cer­ti­fied, Ser­aph will have range of 100 miles and fly at speeds of 150mph. It has the capac­i­ty to car­ry one pilot and four pas­sen­gers.

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space CEO, Michael Cer­ven­ka said: “Fol­low­ing a com­pre­hen­sive glob­al search, we are absolute­ly delight­ed to have Tim join us in our excit­ing endeav­our devel­op­ing world-lead­ing sus­tain­able air­craft.

“Tim brings enor­mous engi­neer­ing prowess and expe­ri­ence, but just as impor­tant­ly an empow­er­ing lead­er­ship style and pas­sion for chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo that fits per­fect­ly with Vertical’s pio­neer­ing ethos.”